Unprecedented

By Al Denelsbeck, on June 5th, 2012

Yeah, despite my kvetching, I actually got some breaks in the clouds during the transit of Venus right now, and the thin wisps allowing the sun to peek through actually made the light level manageable without a ridiculously expensive solar filter (that I would use once.)

During the previous transit in 2004, I was living in Florida and had a basic Galilean telescope that might have produced some nice tight shots from the sunrise event, had a single towering thunderhead not obscured the sun until well after the transit ended. It was, quite possibly, the same thunderhead that I’d been doing time-exposures of hours before, which I think means, “You win some, you lose some.”

The Girlfriend and I tried a few projection shots with binoculars for tonight’s transit, but without strapping them down firmly (which works only for a couple minutes before having to be re-aimed,) we weren’t going to get anything decent. My biggest annoyance was, just as I got a sharp projection and was readying the camera, an airplane actually passed in front of the sun and threw a distinct image on the projection board. In about a second, it was gone, before I could get off a shot.

But I can’t complain, and my favorite image is this one, nicely framed through the tree branches. For working without any specialized equipment at all, I’m good with it.